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This chapter highlights the characteristics of Asia through the analysis of policy-related documents by five donor countries, namely Japan, South Korea, China, India and Thailand. It will also examine the roles played by regional bodies such as the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) and ASPBAE (the Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education) as the horizontal channels influencing aid policies in respective countries. Together with the analysis of the national and organizational policies, the regional process of building consensus on the post-2015 agenda is examined, with a particular focus on the Asia-Pacific Regional Education Conference (APREC) held in August 2014.

The analysis reveals that the region has two faces: one is imaginary and the other is functional. There is a common trend across Asian donors to refer to their historical ties with regions and countries to which they provide assistance and their traditional notions of education and development. They highlight Asian features in contrast to conventional aid principles and approaches based on the Western value system, either apparently or in a muted manner. In this sense, the imagined community of Asia with common cultural roots is perceived by the policymakers across the board.

At the same time, administratively, the importance of the region as a stage between the national and global levels is recognized increasingly in the multilateral global governance structure. With this broadened participatory structure, as discussed in the chapter ‘Post-EFA Global Discourse: The Process of Shaping the Shared View of the ‘Education Community’’, the expected function of the region to transmit the norms and requests from the global level and to collect and summarize national voices has increased.

This chapter applies the business diplomacy concept to Brazil, a leading emerging economy and a member of the BRICS group. Brazil’s emergence as a new economic power has facilitated the emergence of several large national champions whose international behavior is understudied.

The chapter presents an extensive review of secondary sources and selective use of previous survey data compiled by the author.

This chapter adds to the literature on business diplomacy and contributes empirical research on a leading emerging power. Brazil’s ambitious diplomatic agenda is matched by the country’s growing number of internationalized companies. Brazilian corporate managers need to increase their business diplomacy competency to effectively leverage their presence and legitimacy abroad.

Additional case studies will foster a more robust theory regarding business diplomacy of emerging economies.

A growing number of cases of business diplomacy in Brazil will benefit both business and diplomacy communities and facilitate greater research collaboration.

How Brazilian business diplomats navigate between the boundaries of international business, diplomacy, and foreign policy are important questions for a country concerned with its international role and its goal of becoming a key actor in the international arena. A better understanding of how business diplomacy works in Brazil together with more case studies will benefit a new generation of business leaders.

The behavior of Brazilian business elites in international affairs remains largely unexplored. This work’s original contribution is precisely in the form of its focus on Brazilian business diplomats and how business diplomacy is exercised by Brazilian companies.

The study here examines how business actors adapt to changes in networks by analyzing their perceptions or their network pictures. The study is exploratory or iterative in the sense that revisions occur to the research question, method, theory, and context as an integral part of the research process.

Changes within networks receive less research attention, although considerable research exists on explaining business network structures in different research traditions. This study analyzes changes in networks in terms of the industrial network approach. This approach sees networks as connected relationships between actors, where interdependent companies interact based on their sensemaking of their relevant network environment. The study develops a concept of network change as well as an operationalization for comparing perceptions of change, where the study introduces a template model of dottograms to systematically analyze differences in perceptions. The study then applies the model to analyze findings from a case study of Norwegian/Japanese seafood distribution, and the chapter provides a rich description of a complex system facing considerable pressure to change. In-depth personal interviews and cognitive mapping techniques are the main research tools applied, in addition to tracer studies and personal observation.

The dottogram method represents a valuable contribution to case study research as it enables systematic within-case and across-case analyses. A further theoretical contribution of the study is the suggestion that network change is about actors seeking to change their network position to gain access to resources. Thereby, the study also implies a close relationship between the concepts network position and the network change that has not been discussed within the network approach in great detail.

Another major contribution of the study is the analysis of the role that network pictures play in actors' efforts to change their network position. The study develops seven propositions in an attempt to describe the role of network pictures in network change. So far, the relevant literature discusses network pictures mainly as a theoretical concept. Finally, the chapter concludes with important implications for management practice.

This chapter aims to investigate the driving forces in the creation of knowledge and in the process of innovation and the relevance of the governance model with respect to the free market model or the government model in the regulation of the knowledge and innovation networks.

According to a cognitive approach, a conflict is the result of a closer spatial distance between two actors or firms, leading to a contact stimulus and a reciprocal stimulus, which is perceived as a threat for the respective security or identity. This occurs when the two considered parties are characterised by a too large cognitive distance or a too different mindset or culture, which hinders collaboration.

This chapter highlights that the fragmentation of a modern knowledge economy and the pervasive conflicts between various interest groups, conflicts of interests in the roles of the same actors, bottlenecks, rents and income and power disparity in society require a new form of regulation, that is, multi-level governance and new instruments in innovation policies.

The governance or partnership model is based on the principles of negotiation, exchange and consensus, which are different from the principle of authority as in the planning model and from the principle of competition and survival of the fittest as in the free market model. Governance is an approach to the industrial policy that is more suitable to steer or manage a modern capitalist system and the knowledge and innovation networks that characterise this system.

This work examines the intersection between traditional human resource management and the novel employment arrangements of the expanding gig economy. While there is a substantial multidisciplinary literature on the digital platform labor phenomenon, it has been largely centered on the experiences of gig workers. As digital labor platforms continue to grow and specialize, more managers, executives, and human resource practitioners will need to make decisions about whether and how to utilize gig workers. Here the authors explore and interrogate the unique features of human resource management (HRM) activities in the context of digital labor platforms. The authors discuss challenges and opportunities regarding (1) HRM in organizations that outsource labor needs to external labor platforms, (2) HRM functions within digital labor platform firms, and (3) HRM policies and practices for organizations that develop their own spin-off digital labor platform. To foster a more nuanced understanding of work in the gig economy, the authors identify common themes across these contexts, highlight knowledge gaps, offer recommendations for future research, and outline pathways for collecting empirical data on HRM in the gig economy.

This study provides a comprehensive framework of adaptation in triadic business relationship settings in the service sector. The framework is based on the industrial network approach (see, e.g., Axelsson & Easton, 1992; Håkansson & Snehota, 1995a). The study describes how adaptations initiate, how they progress, and what the outcomes of these adaptations are. Furthermore, the framework takes into account how adaptations spread in triadic relationship settings. The empirical context is corporate travel management, which is a chain of activities where an industrial enterprise, and its preferred travel agency and service supplier partners combine their resources. The scientific philosophy, on which the knowledge creation is based, is realist ontology. Epistemologically, the study relies on constructionist processes and interpretation. Case studies with in-depth interviews are the main source of data.